After months of examining documents and listening to testimony and arguments, the fate of the class-action lawsuit against Skilled Healthcare Group Inc. is in the hands of a Humboldt County jury.

The suit, which spans from 2003 to 2009, represents some 32,000 patients who lived at various Skilled Healthcare facilities statewide. At the heart of the case is whether the nursing homes maintained staffing levels required by the state.

Skilled Healthcare's attorney Kippy Wroten described Thursday as a "school day" in her closing arguments as she walked jurors through a list of questions they now face in their deliberations.

Wroten again questioned the formula used to translate nursing hours into patient care, saying that there were only a handful of days in which the facilities being sued operated under the 3.2 nursing hours per-patient per-day standard in California.

"They don't walk into work every day and say, 'Let's provide adequate care,'" Wroten said, pointing to the nurses in attendance for the final day of arguments. "They walk in and say, 'Let's provide the best, most loving care we can.'"

She said that if jurors factor in other staff members -- such as nursing aides -- the facilities operate above the minimum requirement.

Wroten left the jury with a passage from a prayer that hangs on the wall in one of the local nursing homes named in the lawsuit.

It reads, in part: "Give me intelligence to know what I see. And always keep me thankful for the gift that I have been given."

The plaintiffs' attorney Michael Thamer then had his chance for rebuttal, saying the concept of confusion when it comes to how the hours are counted is an illusion created by the defense attorneys.

"The concept that these folks are confused is malarkey," Thamer told the jury. "If it is so confusing, how come no one else in the industry is confused?"

Thamer said class-action lawsuits are designed for cases like this one, and dismissed the notion that the plaintiffs in the case -- there are three named -- should file suits on their own. After court adjourned, Thamer said that it is up to the jury to decide if Skilled Healthcare is guilty of knowingly acting with disregard for the well-being of their patients.

"It's completely in their hands now," Thamer said. "As it should be."

Charlene Harrington, a professor of nursing and sociology at the University of California at San Francisco, testified on behalf of the plaintiffs in March. She said arguments over whether the facilities met the 3.2-hour threshold is irrelevant because it is too low to begin with.

"It's a laughable standard," said Harrington, whose research focuses on the quality and expenditures of nursing home care. "It should be at least 4.1." Harrington said Skilled Healthcare is not unique, and that many large corporations are routinely understaffed.

"They try to keep staffing numbers as low as possible," she said. "They would rather just pay the fines and hope they don't get caught."

Harrington said that an injunction would be a good start to force nursing homes to at least meet the minimum staffing requirement.

District Attorney Paul Gallegos will be in court today when the injunction phase of the trial -- which does not involve the jury -- begins. The district attorney's office intervened in the case four years ago, assisting with collecting witnesses and sifting through evidence over the past few months.

Now Gallegos will make the state's case to prove to the court that Skilled Healthcare failed to provide adequate staffing. Gallegos said that he will present evidence, including video clips of witness testimony, with the goal of getting an injunction filed against Skilled Healthcare that could assess additional penalties and would order the company to make sure that staffing levels are compliant with the law.